Name: Retro Film Review: Excess Baggage (1997)
Item: Excess Baggage
Rating: 50
Author: @drax

(source:tmdb.org)

Alicia Silverstone's quick rise and even quicker fall is a cautionary tale about the weak foundations of Hollywood stardom. It took only a few wrong choices for Silverstone to begin her descent. One of them was Batman and Robin. Another was the decision to start her own production company, something quite brave for a woman of her young age. Unfortunately, this bravery didn't pay off and Silverstone's attempt as producer, Excess Baggage, a 1997 comedy directed by Marco Brambilla, turned into a failure.

In this film, Silverstone plays Emily, the spoiled daughter of a rich, shady and emotionally distant businessman, Alexander Hope (played by Jack Thompson). In an elaborate attempt to bring her father's attention to herself, she fakes her own kidnapping, collects 1 million US$ ransom from her father and in the end locks herself in the trunk of a BMW to finish the deception. Unfortunately, that particular BMW is taken by a professional car thief, Vincent Roche (played by Benicio Del Toro). When he opens the trunk and realises that he unwittingly became a kidnapper, Vincent becomes faced not only with a difficult moral dilemma, but also with his hostage's unbearable character. While the two of them try to find a way to get out of that difficult situation, they become pursued by mobsters and Raymond (played by Christopher Walken), Alexander's brother specialised in dirty work.

Silverstone made two major mistakes during the production of Excess Baggage. The first was a rather unpolished script which begins like an interesting and sometimes even intriguing black comedy only to disappointingly succumb to clichés and predictability in the second part. The second major mistake was casting. Silverstone took the title role and tried very hard to erase her nice teenager image by having her character physically abuse the poor kidnapper, smoke her lungs out and use tons of make-up. All she did with that was to erase a great deal of sympathy for Emily, something Del Toro didn't do with his portrayal of a confused, but generally well-natured criminal. The direction of Marco Brambilla is passable, but it doesn't do much to solve the script's problems. The acting in the film is generally very good, with dependable actors like Walken and Nicholas Turturro enjoying support from many less known colleagues, whose faces, as well as the film's locations, are familiar to X-Files fans. Despite all of its problems, Excess Baggage is sufficiently entertaining and the film's failure, as well as Silverstone's career descent, is undeserved.

RATING: 5/10 (++)

(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.films.reviews on March 18th 2004)